Endurantism, Perdurantism and Special Relativity

There are two main theories about the persistence of objects through time. Endurantists hold that objects are three-dimensional, have only spatial parts, and wholly exist at each moment of their existence. Perdurantists hold that objects are four-dimensional, have temporal parts, and exist only partly at each moment of their existence. We argue that endurantism is poorly suited to describe the persistence of objects in a world governed by special relativity, and it can accommodate a relativistic world only at a high price not worth paying. Perdurantism, on the other hand, fits beautifully with our current scientific understanding of the world. We use only the implications of the Lorentz transformations, without appeal to geometrical interpretations, dimensional analogies or auxiliary premises like temporal eternalism.     

Graspability and object processing in infants

This review pursues the idea that a dual visual system approach is fruitful for interpreting work on infant cognition. We provide examples from the visual perception and cognition literature demonstrating that the potential graspability of stimuli typically used in infant studies influence how these stimuli are processed by the infant brain. Specifically, we argue that small, local, familiar and moving stimuli are more likely to be processed by the dorsal (how or action) stream of visual processing. In contrast, larger, stationary objects are likely to be processed by the ventral (what or perception) stream. This analysis clarifies apparently conflicting results in the literature.     

Take The First: Option-generation and resulting choices

Experimental decision-making research often uses a task in which participants are presented with alternatives from which they must choose. Although tasks of this type may be useful in determining measures (e.g., preference) related to explicitly stated alternatives, they neglect an important aspect of many real-world decision-making environments—namely, the option-generation process. The goal of the present research is to extend previous literature that fills this void by presenting a model that attempts to describe the link between the use of different strategies and the subsequent option-generation process, as well as the resulting choice characteristics. Specifically, we examine the relationship between strategy use, number and order of generated options, choice quality, and dynamic inconsistency. “Take The First” is presented as a heuristic that operates in ill-defined tasks, based on our model assumptions. An experiment involving a realistic (sports) situation was conducted on suitable participants (athletes) to test the predictions of the model. Initial results support the model’s key predictions: strategies producing fewer generated options result in better and more consistent decisions.     

Theory and Practice: Ernest Becker: a vital resource for counselling psychology

In this article we highlight the work of Ernest Becker for counselling psychology professionals and provide a brief overview of Becker's contributions. Several important themes from his writings relevant to counselling psychology are reviewed, including: the uniqueness of man, socialization and self-esteem, culture and heroism, the relativity of heroism, the fear of death, and the dynamics of evil. We also discuss some of the implications of Becker's work for counselling psychology and counselling psychology professionals, including: providing an integrative perspective on human behaviour and development, implications for multicultural counselling, understanding the hero system, the centrality of death in life, and helping people make meaning. We consider Ernest Becker's work a vital resource for counselling psychology.     

Predicting Positive Academic Intention Among African American Males and Females1

Significant attention has been given to the educational shortcomings of African American students. This study examined predictors of educational success among African American high school sophomores. It explored factors that predict differences in students’ academic intention to complete the school year, and how these factors differ by gender. The study was guided conceptually by the theory of planned behavior (TPB). We also assessed perceptions of self. Results indicated that most students had positive predispositions toward school‐year completion, with females being more positively oriented toward academic success than males. The TPB's attitude component was the only predictor tested to operate differentially across gender. Having a positive attitude toward school was a significantly greater predictor of intention to complete the school year for males than for females.     

Integrating Behavior into Health Research and Health Care: One Psychologist's Journey

The author narrates a history of the development of her interest in integrating behavior into heath research and health care. Using diabetes as an exemplar, she describes some of the challenges of integrating behavior into health research and health care: (1) becoming a member of interdisciplinary research and health care teams; (2) acquiring funding for behavioral research with medical populations; (3) communicating scientific findings; and (4) acquiring reimbursement for psychological services rendered. Specific examples of how the author and other psychologists can address these challenges are provided.     

The Parents Matter! Program: Building a Successful Investigator-Community Partnership

We examine the issues involved in creating and maintaining a successful collaboration between university-based researchers and community members when designing and implementing the Parents Matter! Program (PMP). The roles of focus groups, community advisory boards, and community liaisons are highlighted. PMP provides an illustration of the ongoing process of collaboration between investigators and community members and the benefits and challenges of such a partnership.     

Timepieces: Components of Survey Question Response Latencies

Political scientists have increasingly found that the time respondents require to answer survey questions is a useful measure of the strength of political attitudes. However, questions remain about the collection, use, and interpretation of response time data— particularly latencies collected during telephone interviews, far removed from the controlled environment of a laboratory setting. This paper uses a theoretical model of question response to decompose survey response time data into three hypothesized elements—components of response time attributable to baseline individual differences, systematic question effects, and the accessibility of the attitudes being targeted. These findings have implications for the study of political attitudes and other mental constructs, as well as practical implications for public opinion survey researchers using response time data.     

Learning to perceive object unity: a connectionist account

To explore questions of how human infants begin to perceive partly occluded objects, we devised two connectionist models of perceptual development. The models were endowed with an existing ability to detect several kinds of visual information that have been found important in infants’ and adults’ perception of object unity (motion, co‐motion, common motion, relatability, parallelism, texture and T‐junctions). They were then presented with stimuli consisting of either one or two objects and an occluding screen. The models’ task was to determine whether the object or objects were joined when such a percept was ambiguous, after specified amounts of training with events in which a subset of possible visual information was provided. The model that was trained in an enriched environment achieved superior levels of performance and was able to generalize veridical percepts to a wide range of novel stimuli. Implications for perceptual development in humans, current theories of development and origins of knowledge are discussed.